Peter, the dough did not seem like it had a lot of oil in it, compared to Malnati's, Gino's East, et al. My rough guess would be that the percentage of oil was anywhere from 8 to 12%. From my view, it had a curious amount of yellow specks of sorts in the dough skin which was uniformly flattened in many respects. Can't imagine what the yellow portions of the dough skin were. There was a sheeter -- as this picture I think shows -- used to sheet the dough skin, which seemed to do the job with ease. But all in all, the pizza was far superior to that I had in the past at Giordano's and they might make a big fan of me yet. --BTB

As you know, I have spent a fair amount of time analyzing the nutrition data that was given to me some time ago by Giordano's. After nineteen pages of notes, calculations and photocopies, I have developed a healthy skepticism about the accuracy of such data, along with a suspicion of my own skills in analyzing such data, but I could not conclude that a lot of oil was used in the dough--and certainly not the 20+% figures that many of our members have been using to make Giordano's clone doughs. My last oil calculation was just under 13%. I have held back making a test pizza based on that value pending getting more information about the cheeses (Stella?) used by Giordano's. I was also hoping that some member who has ordered frozen pizzas from Giordano's might step forward and disclose any ingredients list of other information from packaging for such pizzas.

I, too, noted the yellow spots in the dough from the photos you posted. I even used the 400% zoom feature of my PC to examine them more carefully. The only time I have experienced that type of spotting is when I have left a dough uncovered such that a crust formed on the dough. When opening up such a dough ball, the crusty part separates and becomes interspersed with the normal parts of the dough, leading to a mottled overall appearance. Another possibility is that the spots are formed when an oily dough is sheeted with a lot of bench flour. I couldn't tell from the photos, but are the yellow "blobs" in the tray dough? If so, did you see any dough making equipment on the premises? With a sheeter, you don't really need to use dough balls, especially if there is a scale to weigh a piece of dough before it goes through the sheeter. Unless Giordano's has a lot of units in Florida, it would seem logical to make the dough on premises rather than at a commissary, although the dough production could easily be contracted out to a third party.

The sheeter does indeed look like an Anets sheeter such as I researched not too long ago.

Peter, as usual, you are spot on with the lower oil content of this dough, at least as it compares to a Malnati's or Uno's clone. I've been tinkering with this over the last couple months because we really don't have a baker's percentage on this but I haven't gone as low as 13% just yet.

I might as well throw it out here, right now. This is the formulation I used on my last attempt with success.

AP Flour 100%Water 52Veg Oil 12Olive Oil 3Salt 1ADY .75

TF = .180 (1/3 of total dough amount is used for top dough layer equalling .12 bottom layer and .06 top layer. Also, dough is rolled out to overhang the top edge of the pan for both top and bottom, before trimming, reducing actual TF even further.)

Section into top and bottom dough balls and give at least an 18 hr. fridge rise, but 24 hrs. is preferable.

I assemble this in the same fashion that we've seen in some videos. First filling the bottom "shell" with cheese and "toppings" then covering with top layer and tucking it in down in the corners and finally venting before topping with sauce.

I don't have any pics but next time I try this I'll do a few and get them up.

Peter, yes, the yellow "blobs" seemed to have been in the tray dough, too. Don't recall seeing much bench flour as they sheeted the dough skin. There was a much larger section of the kitchen to my left as I was taking the pictures, but since it was an "in-between" time (between lunch and dinner), there was no activity going on there at the time. I think that was in part the dough making area, but am not 100% certain. They serve alot of pastas and other meals also. Now you're giving me an excuse to go back and have another stuffed pizza for the sake of food science. --BTB

ME, I'm not certain. The cooked dough or crust was very "flaky," so one would wonder if there wasn't something like butter, margarine, oleo, or something else with it. In any event, it was very tasty and delicious. I will have to sacrifice and . . . go back for more! --BTB

I broke down the total amount of oil into 5% olive oil and 95% vegetable oil, based on information that buzz provided. Also, if the Giordano's ingredients list is to be believed, there is more yeast by percent than salt. The yeast issue is why I have been asking about how and where the dough is prepared at Giordano's.

BTB,

What ME and I are referring to is the blobs of something on the tray in the foreground of the the photo you posted in Reply 120. From the sliceny report referenced earlier in this thread, it appears that butter is used in the pans. However, buzz mentioned in one of his posts that the workers scoop butter or margarine out of a tub of some sort. That would seem to make more sense than putting it on trays where it can melt faster at room temperature.

That pic of the un-cut, un-sauced pie shows, from my experience, what dried "crusting" looks like after proofing of a dough ball just like Peter posted earlier.

Peter,

I don't really know where I came up with any info that placed more salt than yeast in the formulation but an increase in yeast to 1% wouldn't be a huge increase to draw them to even percentages. Is it possible they exist at equal proportions in their formulation or did you see info that indicated definitely MORE yeast than salt?

Also, to adjust the oils from buzz's info:

AP Flour 100%Water 52Veg Oil 14.25Olive Oil .75Salt 1ADY 1

In kneading this, (actually, not this, the formulation in reply 122) I did go against the convetional wisdom around here and went with a slightly longer knead because it looked on video that this dough had some stretchiness (extensiblity) to it by watching guys toss the top layer and stretch it down in the corners without tearing. That to me indicated some decent gluten formation. I kneaded this in the KA for 4 minutes (not a long time but longer) with the C hook after fully combining with the paddle attachment.

I do not believe that it is possible to isolate a quantity of yeast from nutrition data. In my case, I tried to determine how much salt is used in the different parts of the pizza, by looking at sodium levels, and then assigning a baker's percent value to the yeast that exceeds the baker's percent for salt. Unfortunately, there is salt in just about everything--the cheeses (mozzarella and Parmesan), the sauce, the crust, and possibly the butter used to grease the pan. And the amount of sodium is in direct proportion to the amounts of the ingredients used. There are limitations as to how much salt can be used in these ingredients so you usually won't get sodium numbers that are grossly excessive. My analysis suggested around 1.25% salt in the dough. So, I just assigned a slightly higher value to the ADY. I am still trying to triangulate the quantities of cheese, sauce and cheese to fine-tune the numbers. The weights of the cheeses, sauce and crust, plus a percent to compensate for losses during baking, have to add up to the weight of the baked pizza given in the Giordano's nutrition data.

Like you, I have been suspicious of the short knead times for the Giordano's dough. I can't imagine that a commercial operation making a few hundred dough balls a day, or an equivalent bulk dough, would be able to use a short knead time with minimal gluten development. That doesn't mean that there can't be a fair amount of oil in the dough, but my analysis just didn't indicate a large quantity, at least not in the 20+% range. I would find higher oil levels more plausible in a bulk dough made on-site and divided/scaled for passage through the sheeter with a lot of bench flour. You might also recall from our Home Run Inn research how HRI had problems with their proofing equipment because of the high oil content for their doughs that apparently was gumming up their proofer. So, we can't absolutely rule out very high oil levels with the Giordano's dough. But I still have my doubts. I also believe that the Giordano's crust may be thinner than what others have been using on the forum. This would conceal a longer knead time because the crust would not come across as bready.

Hi all - I'm working on my first Giordano's style pizza, which is resting right now and will be baked off tonight.

However, I've just realized... I can't find anywhere posted posted in this thread an appropriate oven tempurature and estimated cooking time.

All the posts just say.. "I did this and this and this.... and then it was great!"

I am actually gonig to be baking an 8" pie tonight, in a dark-anodized slope-sided pan (from pizzatools.com). Any recommendations at this rather last minute?

Thanks in advance!

ps - I'm also scouring other threads on this one, but it seems the answer could be different for different "styles" of deep dish. Is it appropriate for Giordanos to pre-bake sasuage, or just toss it in uncooked? One big disc or rip off chunks?

Just a quick reply. I suggest you bake at 450 degrees F for around 20 to 30 minutes, but judge the pizza by the color of the crust to see if it's done as 8" is an unusual size. Sausage cooked in a pizza at that temperature for over 10 minutes will be thoroughly cooked and IMO is better than using cooked sausage. Giordano's puts a lot of chunks of uncooked sausage in their pizzas. --BTB

I decided recently to take a stab at making a Giordano's stuffed pizza clone based on the information I had gathered and analyzed on that style. At first I was hesitant about posting my results since I was more interested at this point in time in getting the "form, fit and function" right rather than trying to perfect the clone. I wanted to get the total pizza weight correct, both unbaked and baked, and to get the proper relationship of the amounts of dough/crust, cheeses, sauce and, in my case, pepperoni. I was also using a brand new 10" x 2" deep aluminum cake pan to bake the pizza. I had buttered it well before assembling the pizza but I expected that I would not get the best final crust coloration for the parts of the crust in direct contact with the pan. That accounts for the light coloration shown in the photos below.

I also tried to make the dough as I imagined it would be made in a commercial Giordano's operation. I am not yet prepared to disclose the dough formulation I used (although I will do so once I feel that I have a credible clone), but the dough was prepared in my KitchenAid stand mixer and subjected to three days of cold fermentation. I used Gold Medal all-purpose flour that I had supplemented with some vital wheat gluten to approximate the protein content of the Ceresota/Hecker's flour that is popular in the Chicago area and used for deep-dish doughs in that area. The first photo below shows the dough as it went into the refrigerator. The two poppy seeds shown in that photo were for me to monitor the expansion of the dough while it was in the refrigerator--by monitoring the increase in spacing between the two poppy seeds. As it turned out, the dough increased in volume by about 55% after the first day, by 100% after the second day (a doubling), and by almost 300% after the third day (a quadrupling). I stopped at three days since that appeared to be consistent with what I had read about the window of usability of the Giordano's dough. The dough handled exceptionally well at every stage. It was very easy to roll out (using a rolling pin) and virtually no bench flour was needed. I could control the diameter of the skins with ease and I could stretch them without fear of anything going wrong. The dough skins looked as I saw them in the Giordano's video at travelchannel.com (as previously referenced in this thread). Assembling the pizza was a breeze. The dough skins looked and felt as I had perceived them in the Giordano's video. The dough behaved so well that there was no need to rush to complete the assembly of the pizza. I used a thinner top skin than I used for the main skin that went into the pan.

Once the pizza was dressed, I baked it on a pizza stone that had been positioned in the middle oven rack position and preheated for about an hour at 450 degrees F. The total bake time was about 25 minutes. Part way through the bake, I covered the top of the pizza with a sheet of aluminum foil because the crust seemed to be browning too fast. When I did a follow-up check, I removed the aluminum foil but forgot to put it back on the pizza. That accounts for the slight overbaking of the exposed crust. The cheese I used was a roughly 50/50 blend of shredded whole milk low-moisture mozzarella cheese and low-moisture part skim mozzarella cheese. I also sprinkled some Parmesan cheese over the unbaked pizza. The sauce was a blend of 6-in-1 ground tomatoes, RedPack whole tomatoes in puree (I used a stick blender to pulverize the whole tomatoes), some garlic powder, black pepper, pulverized basil and oregano leaves, and some sugar.

The remaining photos below show the finished pizza. I have never had a Giordano's pizza before so I have no idea what I created. The crust was a mixture of crispy parts, slightly bready parts and biscuit-like parts. The flavor was good and the overall pizza tasted fine. What would help me at this point is to get a better understanding of the finished crust characteristics. It does me no good to get that part wrong if my objective is to simulate the Giordano's style. I also noticed that my pizza seemed not to have the same height in the middle as the Giordano's photos that I have seen. I used about 12 1/2 ounces of cheese and almost 8 1/2 ounces of sauce. That was for a 10" pizza. That would suggest that I may need more cheese and/or sauce. The unbaked pizza in my case weighed about 37 1/2 ounces. The finished pizza weighed about 35 1/2 ounces. The difference represented a loss during baking of a bit over 5%.

The photos below show my most recent effort at making a Giordano’s clone stuffed pizza. This time I used a dark sloping-sided pan (9” top diam. x 8.25” bottom diam. x 2” deep), with the amount of dough (using a modified dough formulation) adjusted for that size and shape of pan. The dough was allowed to ferment in the refrigerator for about 3 days and 4 hours. This was in line with the 3-4 days that Giordano’s purportedly uses for their dough.

The pizza was loaded with cheese (a blend of low-moisture, whole milk mozzarella cheese and low-moisture part-skim mozzarella cheese, with grated Parmesan cheese on the top of the unbaked pizza), multiple fillings (pepperoni, sausage, onions, peppers and garlic), and sauce (the same sauce as I used in my last effort). As the photos show, the innards of the pizza pretty much filled up the entire pan. The cheeses weighed almost 13 ounces, the fillings weighed about 6.8 ounces, and the sauce weighed almost 10 ounces. The total weight of the unbaked pizza was almost 46 ounces. To be sure that the pizza baked thoroughly, I baked it on a pizza stone that had been placed on the lowest oven rack position and preheated for about an hour at around 450 degrees F. That arrangement allowed the pizza to bake slowly enough for the crust to develop a nice color. I am sure that the darker pan also helped with the crust coloration. Using the stone at the lowest oven rack position also helped keep the top of the pizza from baking too quickly and overbrowning the exposed top crust. The total bake time was around 30 minutes. The finished pizza weighed almost 44.5 ounces. The loss during baking was thus a bit over 3%.

The pizza turned out very well, and was very tasty, with a uniform crust in terms of texture and mouth feel. It was an improvement over my last Giordano’s clone pizza. However, from the expansion of the dough over the roughly three-day period, and from the way the dough handled when used to make the two skins (the main skin and the top skin), I concluded that further modification of my starting Giordano’s dough clone formulation is necessary. My goal is to have the dough behave as I have seen it in the Giordano’s video at travelchannel.com. None of this is to take away from the success of the pizza. But my goal is, and has always been, to emulate a real Giordano’s pizza, not to just make a good pizza.

Love it! Need It! Wanna Try It!Peter could you explain your (undisclosed) dough handling process and different weight /thickness if any between the top and bottom skins? hand toss? any Pre baking? or pre cooking of ingredients? Comments on the sloped pan? Does giordanos use straight sided?What percentages were you using this time around? Were you happier with the height this time around with the increase in cheese and sauce?Looks SO tasty, and a tad filling too!

Peter could you explain your (undisclosed) dough handling process and different weight /thickness if any between the top and bottom skins? hand toss? any Pre baking? or pre cooking of ingredients? Comments on the sloped pan? Does giordanos use straight sided?What percentages were you using this time around? Were you happier with the height this time around with the increase in cheese and sauce?

John,

I am still regurgitating the data from the last pizza so I haven't yet determined what the next dough formulation should look like. I thought that the dough for the first Giordano's clone handled more like the real thing (based on the Giordano's video) but the crust for the last pizza was better in my opinion even though the dough was too extensible after 3+ days of cold fermentation. I believe the answer is a dough formulation that falls somewhere between the two. Unfortunately, it will take some time to re-do all of the numbers, simply because of the need to do a lot of re-calculations and have them fit within the data I collected through all of my analytical work. However, I can answer the other questions you posed.

Giordano's uses straight-sided pans that appear to be 2" deep. I used the pan I described simply because it is is the closest pan I have that is dark and does not produce an excessive amount of pizza for me to eat. I have a beautiful 2" deep, dark anodized straight-sided deep-dish pan from pizzatools.com/Lloyd's, but it would produce far more pizza than I can comfortably eat, even with leftovers. The first pizza I made used a 9" x 2" pan but it was light colored and not yet seasoned enough to produce the desired crust coloration, even with ample greasing of the pan with butter, without removing the pizza from the pan toward the end of the bake to achieve that desired degree of crust coloration. That is still an option because I found that I could remove the baked pizza from the pan without any difficulty or with the crust splitting during such removal. I found this true of both the straight-sided and sloping-sided pans I used.

To prepare the dough for the two Giordano's clone pizzas I described, I first determined how much dough I would need for the particular pan based on the data I got from my analytical work. I found that in both cases I did not have to carve out a piece of the bulk dough to use for the top skin. The bulk dough in both cases was very malleable, much like putty, and I was able to carve out the piece of dough for the top skin after the bulk dough was taken out of the refrigerator. That was good news since that avoided having to use two storage containers, one for the dough for the top skin and one for the dough for the main skin. To determine how much dough to use for the top skin, which was much thinner than the main skin, I determined what diameter of the top skin I would need to cover the top of the pizza and the sides of the pan up to and slightly beyond the top rim of the pan where it would be joined with the main skin. In my case, that diameter was about 10.5", or a radius of 5.25". Purely as an estimate, I decided to use a thickness factor for the top skin of 0.05. I then performed the following simple calculation of the amount of dough that I would need for the top skin:

I simply carved out a piece of dough of that weight from the bulk dough ball and set it aside. That was it. The rest of the dough, with enough to drape over the top of the rim of the pan by about an inch, was used for the main skin. When I ultimately joined the two skins after adding the cheeses and fillings, there was some excess dough that I simply trimmed off with a sharp knife, just as is shown in the Giordano's video. Both the main skin and the top skin were rolled out using a rolling pin, which simulated the Anets sheeters/rollers that Giordano's uses in its restaurants.

I did not pre-bake either the main skin or the top skin (without sauce) but I did partially cook the vegetables in olive oil. I also partially cooked the sausage to the pink stage, mainly to be able to reduce the fat content, and I nuked the pepperoni slices in the microwave for the same reason. These are just personal preferences and an effort on my part to reduce fat in my diet, even at the expense of the loss of some flavor. In the past, I have even replaced animal fat with olive oil so as to retain at least some fat mouth feel and flavor.

Next time, I think I will go back to a plain or pepperoni pizza just to see how the crust bakes up with about an inch of exposed crust between the top of the pizza and the rim of the pan. Loading up the pizza as I did the last time, avoided that test. But I plan to increase both the amount of cheese and sauce to get the desired overall weight of the pizza based on the Giordano's nutrition data.

Thanks for the details Peter, That helps me to understand how to calculate the top skin, its just like any other based on size with a .05 thickness factor, .1 ish for the bottom skin? I have 2 -9" x 1.5 and a 12" x2" is the smalllest I have with a 2" side. Do you think 1.5 inches is appropriate for the hieght or must go 2" with the crust? Thanks againjohn